The zNano Membranes perform brilliantly.

We focus on bioinspired material sciences to improve water treatment membranes. We’ve demonstrated that surface grafting using bioinspired zNano technology can increase intrinsic permeability of ultrafiltration (UF) zMembranes – and can also protect against fouling from organics. This is proven by the increased wettability of zNano’s bioinspired membranes demonstrated below.

zNano’s Bioinspired Coating

1. Sol – gel encapsulation:

  • Improved wetting via natively hydrophilic
  • Anti-fouling via natively hydrophilicity
  • Mechanically strong via sol gel crystalline bonding network

2. Surfactant Self Assembly:

  • Self-healing for high surface coverage
  • Tunable surface charge
  • Reliable production >99% success rate

3. Covalent surface grafting:

  • Covalent linkage to the surface
  • Chemically resistant
  • Mechanically resistant

4. Production overview

  • Low cost, scalable materials
    • Sol – gel precursors, surfactants, water, alcohol
    • Solvent: alcohol
  • Oven-free curing

Wetting Data

zNano’s bioinspired membranes are also very mechanically stable, leading to longer lifetimes and more resiliency to chemical cleaning:

The zUF50 Membrane Advantage

0%
Increase in permeability

Wider range of operating temperatures (up to 176 F / 80 C)

Wider pH ranges
(2 to 12)

Recovered performance
after cleaning

Less costs per element
than ceramic membranes

Higher Flux vs. PAN
when treating Oily Waters

zNano coating technology is a bioinspired covalent hydrophilic ceramic coating that can be applied to a variety of materials. Currently limited to improving water treatment membranes, zNano believes it has a variety of other uses.

zNano’s zUF50 Membrane is able to treat some of the most difficult-to-treat wastewater high in hydrocarbons where both oil and grease, and total suspended solids are at or greatly exceed 100 ppm.